by Maia Chance
“Oh, I’m sure you do,” Effie said.
Kimmie slung her purse over her shoulder and clomped out on superhigh cork wedges.
“Come on,” I said to Effie. “Pay up, and let’s go to Jodi’s farm. I want to see this thing through.”
“I do realize this wild-goose chase is a very therapeutic distraction from Roger and his fitness bimbo, Agnes, but it’s lunchtime, and I really did want to drink a martini.”
“That’s going to be your lunch? A martini?” Effie hadn’t touched the bread and cheese in Roland Pascal’s trailer.
“I always order extra olives.”
I slung on my backpack. “How are you not dead? Come on.”
* * *
Shakti Organic Farm was about ten miles outside of Naneda. Ten miles gave me plenty of time to think things through and cool off, with the AC blasting and all the windows down too, since Effie was at the coffin nails again.
Two million years ago—give or take—massive glaciers scoured what is now western New York like an OCD germophobe. The result was a row of long, narrow lakes in a sprawling landscape. Effie and I drove through a patchwork of lush forests, vineyards, and farmland picturesque enough to make me fantasize about becoming a Mennonite dairy farmer.
Yeah. That fantasy lasted about three seconds.
“If Jodi was getting written out of her mom’s will, that’s a classic motive for murder,” I said. “I seem to remember that being a motive in an episode of Magnum, P.I., anyway.”
“I’d forgotten all about that show! I loved Magnum’s sexy moustache. I suppose you had the hots for the little sidekick fellow—what was his name?”
“Higgins. And no, I did not have the hots for him.”
“What is your hypothesis?” Effie asked. “That Jodi found out about her mother’s will sometime late yesterday, lured her to the kitchen porch of the inn, and in a rage, strangled her?”
“Basically. Except, who says Kathleen was lured? She may have been followed.”
“True, but why would she have gone to the inn?” A pause. “You do realize that if Jodi is the murderer, we are going to her rather remote home to tell her we know that she’s a murderer, at which point she may, oh, I don’t know, strangle us too and bury us in her organic compost heap?”
“You’re right. Maybe this is a bad idea. We can’t just go to her house and confront her.”
“I know—we’ll be sweet.” Effie flashed her teeth.
She didn’t look sweet when she smiled like that. She looked like the love child of an antique doll and a crocodile handbag.
“I hate to admit it,” I said, “but that was a good idea Chester had about going to the code-compliance officer and asking him to reconsider the demolition date for the inn.”
“It was. Why don’t you call and make an appointment?”
“It’s Sunday.”
“Don’t procrastinate, Agnes.”
I used Effie’s phone to call City Hall. City Hall was basically shut down for the weekend, but I kept dialing random offices until someone finally told me that the code-compliance officer, Karl Knudsen, would be back in at nine o’clock Monday morning.
“Thanks,” I said and hung up. I relayed the info to Effie. “Look! There’s the mailbox with the bullet holes. Slow down.”
Effie braked and turned into a dirt driveway. We were stopped by a shut stock gate. Birch trees obscured the property. Signs nailed to trees read,
Posted
Private Property
Hunting, fishing, trapping, or trespassing for any purpose is strictly forbidden.
Violators will be prosecuted.
“Okay, turn back,” I said.
“You’re a chicken!”
I sighed, climbed out of the car, and pushed open the stock gate. The hinges screeched.
I got back in, and we jostled up the long, twisty dirt drive—a quarter mile, maybe. Weeds on the middle strip dragged and thumped across the Cadillac’s underbelly, which made Effie smile and say, “I do hope Paul enjoys destroyed suspension.”
A pooched-out old farmhouse came into view, and then a small outbuilding and a big red barn. The barn’s paint looked patchy, but its roof glittered with solar panels. A fenced pasture sprawled behind the barn, dotted with cows. A fruit orchard and patches of vegetables and flowers stretched to the side of the pasture. A banged-up white pickup sat in front of the house.
I heard a squawky sound beyond the purr of the Cadillac’s engine, and as we drove closer, I realized it was a couple of dogs barking.
Effie parked behind the pickup truck and switched off the engine.
“Um, those sound like really big dogs,” I said. These weren’t little yips; they were booms. “In the barn, maybe?”
Effie patted her handbag. “I have pepper spray, if it comes to that.”
Woo-boy.
We mounted the front porch, and I knocked on the door. While we waited, I looked around. Busted red tricycle, chock-full kitty litter box, saggy corduroy sofa. Cute.
“No one’s home,” I said.
“But the truck is here.”
“Who says they have only one vehicle? Kimmie mentioned that Jodi has a boyfriend. And look—no car seat in the pickup, and Jodi had a little kid on her lap at her market stall, remember?”
“Wonderful deduction,” Effie said dryly.
Actually, I was pretty proud of my deduction. I squinted over at the barn (my glasses don’t perform well at distances longer than the length of a library shelf). A person—a guy, a pale skinny guy wearing all black—was running from the outbuilding and into the barn through a side door. I recognized him: he was the morose teen I privately thought of as Gothboy, who bagged groceries at the Green Apple.
What was he doing running around this farm? Creepy.
Effie must not have seen Gothboy, because she was striding across the matted dirt drive that lay between the house and the barn. “Yoo-hoo!” she called. “Anybody home? Hello?”
My sneakers felt like they were superglued to the porch. “Aunt Effie,” I said.
She didn’t hear me.
“Aunt Effie!”
“Chop-chop, Agnes,” she called airily over her shoulder.
She was ten yards away from the barn. Eight. The barking grew louder, and I realized that the dogs weren’t in the barn, but in the outbuilding.
Effie was six yards away, still yoo-hooing.
I had no choice; I couldn’t let my old auntie, whose bones were probably like sticks of chalk, confront anyone on her own.
I was going in.
I jogged to catch up. “I think we’d better go back to the car,” I huffed and puffed, reaching Effie’s side.
“Nonsense. You said not half an hour ago that you want to see things through.” She reached for the handle of one of the big barn doors.
“Yeah, well, that was before I knew this would involve a Stephen King farm and a pack of rabid dingoes. You can’t just open someone else’s barn!”
Too late. Effie had cracked the door. It wasn’t dim and murky inside; it was blazing white-hot with suspended lights. Hundreds—maybe thousands—of tall, frondy green plants were lined up on long benches.
“Oh, crud,” I whispered. “That’s pot.”
“Ah, reminds me of Morocco, nineteen seventy—”
“Let’s skip the trip down memory lane and shut the door and get the heck out of here.” Effie seemed to be mesmerized. Do people get cannabis flashbacks? “Come on, Aunt Effie!” I grabbed her arm and pulled.
Off to the right, a door swung open on the outbuilding. A second young man slid out, and so did a couple of pointy, black dog heads, barking away. Dobermans. For real. The man leaned on the door and sort of squashed the dogs back inside the outbuilding. He latched the door. The dogs kept barking.
“Ummmmm . . .” I said softly.
The man held a shotgun diagonally across his body, like a militia guy on TV. He had a buzz cut and a narrow, mean mouth, but he could’ve been handsome. He was about my
age, slim and muscular-looking in his jeans and wife-beater.
“Didn’t you see the signs?” he yelled over the barking. “This is private property!”
“We were looking for Jodi,” I said. My voice sounded raspy. “Are you Jentry?”
He sneered a little; I took it as a yes. “Jodi’s not here. Someone murdered her mom.” He was reading the lettering on my T-shirt with undisguised contempt. “Sorry to disappoint you, Band Camp. Now I suggest you two get the hell off my property before I have you arrested for trespassing.” He hoisted the shotgun.
My belly went loop-de-loop. But could I keep my mouth shut? Nope. Because I hate it when people think I’m dumb. I said, “That’s not basil in there.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jentry did that menacing clunk-CLICK thing with his shotgun.
I took a step back. “Because, you know, I totally thought it was rosemary. It smells exactly like rosemary, doesn’t it, Auntie? This here’s my old auntie. You wouldn’t shoot an old lady, would you?”
“I am not an old lady,” Effie said. “Where are your manners, Agnes?” She looked at Jentry. “How old would you say I was?”
“Get out of here,” Jentry said, “or I swear to God I’ll kill you.” He aimed at the ground between himself and us. Splat. Dirt chunks exploded. My eardrums buzzed, and Effie screeched and took off running. Not toward the car, though. She was headed to the back of the house.
I hoofed it after her, dodging cow pies and dirt clods.
“Hey!” Jentry took a couple more potshots.
Effie rounded the corner of the house, and I was two steps behind. A tire swing dangled from a large, leafy tree. Aluminum lawn chairs slumped in overgrown grass.
Effie stopped, panting. “Look at my shoe! It’s ruined. I stepped in something.”
“Who cares about your stupid shoe?” I was wheezing, half-bent, but I did smell something, and it wasn’t cow pie. It was Doberman poop. “Pee-eww! Why did you run back here instead of to the car?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking clearly.” She wiped the sole of her shoe clean on the ground.
“Hey, look.” The farmhouse’s back door was wide open to a porch with a big white chest freezer. The kitchen was visible—dingy cupboards, avocado-green stove. “It’s completely trashed in there.”
“We really ought to get going.”
True. I stole a peek around the corner of the house. “Oh no. Here he comes. And he’s wearing his Mister Pissy face.”
We scampered around the back of the house, down the front driveway, and dove into the Cadillac. After some fumbling for her keys, Effie got the engine going, and we jounced down the rutted drive in reverse.
I had a clear view of Jentry emerging from behind the house and hefting his shotgun. Then Gothboy came loping out of the barn, and he had a shotgun too.
“Hurry!” I cried.
“I am.” Effie was driving with her neck corkscrewed to see out the back.
Jentry took aim.
“Duck!” I screamed.
We ducked a fraction of a second before our windshield crackled into a spider web of fissures.
“What a psycho!” I yelled.
Effie peeked up just enough to get us around a bend in the driveway and out of sight of the house. She did a five-point turn, jerking between drive and reverse, and then she roared the rest of the way down the drive, past the stock gate, and burst out onto the main road.
Chapter 9
I struggled upright. Foam padding oozed from a singed bullet hole in my headrest. “Oh my gosh,” I whispered. “He was really going to do it.”
The Cadillac zigzagged as Effie burrowed in her handbag. Luckily, no one else was on the road. She fumbled a cigarette from the pack. “Light this for me, would you, darling?”
“How?”
“With this.” She tossed a BIC lighter in my lap.
I stuck the cigarette between my lips and lit up. My hands were shaking. “If I get addicted to nicotine because of you, I’ll kill you.” I puffed the tobacco to life, coughed, and passed the cig to Effie. “Did you see all the solar panels on the barn roof? I read that those grow lights—for the pot, you know—take a ton of electricity, and that’s one way the police find these farms: massive electricity bills. So the solar panels are a way to get off the grid.”
Effie nodded, a little spastically. “And that paralegal Kimmie said that Jodi and Jentry are do-it-yourselfers, which gives them a simply marvelous excuse to keep everyone away from their farm.”
“Yeah,” I said. I was still struggling for breath. I’d had more cardio that day than I’d had in the previous three months combined, but I realized part of my wheeziness was from good old-fashioned fear. I’d never been shot at before. Obviously. I sneaked a look behind us. No white pickup on our tail . . . yet. “Jentry might’ve strangled Kathleen. He’s violent. He could’ve done the dirty work, and then Jodi started the rumor at the coffee shop this morning. They have a motive—to make sure that Kathleen didn’t sign her will and disinherit Jodi.”
“Do you suppose Jentry will attempt to hunt us down?” Effie glanced in the rearview mirror.
“Maybe.” Holy hamburgers. I couldn’t believe this was happening.
A shrill chirping emanated from Effie’s handbag.
“That must be Detective Albright calling,” she said, fumbling for her phone. “Or your father.”
I prayed it was Albright. I was dreading talking to Dad. My whole life, I’d always wanted him to be proud of me. I was only six when Mom died of cancer, but that was old enough to have been aware of his devastation. I remember thinking, It’s up to me to make this guy happy again. Now I know you can’t really do that for another person, that we’re all responsible for our own happiness, but I still carry around this self-imposed burden, this backpack weighted with guilt and grief. I couldn’t let Dad down. I just couldn’t.
Effie tossed me her phone, and I recognized Albright’s number. I took a deep breath and tapped answer.
“Remember, darling, be discreet,” Effie whispered.
“Hello?” I said into the phone.
“Miss Blythe, this is Detective Albright.” It sounded like he was driving too. “You texted that you have an important clue to relay?”
“Yeah.” In a rush—and discreetly omitting Effie’s sound machine—I explained to Albright how I had a hunch that the murderer had been the one who started the rumor about Kathleen having a fight with Effie and then not answering her phone or her door. Meanwhile, Effie sped along country lanes smoking, and I grew carsick.
There was a long pause when I’d finished. Then Albright said, “And what do you think the purpose of starting such a rumor would be?” He suddenly sounded like a therapist. The leading question, the warmly condescending tone . . . Was he doing some kind of criminal psychology test on me? Like, maybe he wasn’t even taking my theory seriously but was using this as an opportunity to profile my psychosis?
“Um, to frame my aunt and me for murder?” Jeez, that sounded so feeble. I sounded like someone concocting stuff to divert attention from myself. I sounded . . . guilty. What if Jentry really pressed trespassing charges? His farm was clearly marked with private property signs, and we had gone through that closed gate. Plus, Effie and I were driving around in a stolen car.
Dad. This would kill Dad. He had high cholesterol already, and this could tip his poor lumbering heart over the edge.
“Is there anything else, Miss Blythe?”
I’d meant to tell Albright about Jentry shooting at us, and about Jodi being written out of Kathleen’s will, and about the pot farm. But I heard myself blurting, “Nope! That’s all! I’ll let you go!” And I punched end call.
Oh, no. What had I done? I had the vague idea that neglecting to mention things to the police was almost as bad as lying to the police, when it came to obstruction of justice.
I was half hoping that Effie would protest and tell me to call Albright back to tell him about all those oth
er things. But she didn’t. On the contrary, her bony shoulders relaxed as she cruised down the road.
I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you relieved?”
“I’m not,” Effie said in the airy voice I’d already learned to be deeply suspicious of.
“Why?” I said. “Spit it out.”
“Nothing, really, except that . . . It just so happens that the Naneda police chief has, well, a bee in his bonnet about me, so I’m glad you didn’t mention anything that would result in another trip to the police station.”
“Spill,” I said. Effie was turning out to be quite the problem auntie.
She zoomed around a bend, very nearly swiping a row of mailboxes. “Well, you see, the police chief—Ken Gwozdek—have you met him?”
“Sure. He was appointed by Dad.” Ken Gwozdek is pretty much a walrus, complete with whiskers, midriff rolls, and the surly attitude. “What’s the bee in his bonnet about?”
“He blames me for his parents’ divorce. He’s very hurt about it.”
“What? Ken is, what, over fifty years old? And didn’t his parents divorce in, like, the seventies?”
“In eighty-one.”
“Omigod. You did break up his parents’ marriage?”
“No. No, I did not break up their marriage. They were already separated when I came to stay in Naneda for the summer—that was when my mother was dying, and I was here to help her, and I needed comfort. And Scottie—he was Ken’s dad, but you probably don’t remember him—he needed comfort too. So we provided comfort for each other.”
“At the Motel 6?”
“No, at my mother’s house.”
“You’re the femme fatale of Naneda!”
“I’m human, Agnes.”
“Why does Police Chief Gwozdek think you broke up mommy and daddy, if you didn’t?”
“Oh, because they didn’t get back together after that summer. Not that they ever would have. They hated each other.”